Trade Union Website League Table 2018

Every June, I update the league table of trade union websites. The 2018 edition can be seen below (Previous results can be seen for 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012).

It’s important to note that the league table doesn’t attempt to review and score the quality of each site directly. Rather, I use industry leading metrics to measure the influence of each site. These metrics look at how many back links a site has across the internet to judge how often the site is being mentioned. The more influential the linking website, the greater the perceived influence of the website.

This year, I’ve used the two leading metrics from Moz.com. These metrics are used a lot by the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) industry to gauge how well a website will perform in search engine searches. While a site needs to be configured well to maximize performance in Search Engines like Google, if all else is equal, the higher the position in the table, the higher the site should appear.

I’ve decided to keep the NUT and ATL sections of the new National Education Union (NEU) in the list for the time being, as they still seem to be the main hub for content, but I’ll review this next year. Similarly, I’ve left the BECTU section of Prospect in for the same reason.

The CSP (Chartered Society of Physiotherapy) have reclaimed the top spot from UNISON, having been top in 2016 and 2015. The trade unions that also act as professional associations tend to do well in this table, presumably due to a combination of this additional side of the organisation along with popular specialist content.

UNISON move down to second place, while the BDA, Unite and the NUT section of the newly formed National Education Union (NEU) make up the rest of the top five respectively.

There hasn’t been much movement in the top ten. Equity (6th), NUJ (7th), Musicians Union (8th), UCU (9th) and GMB (10th) continue to feature.

Who’s up?

There are not as many large moves up the table this year as there often are. USDAW have the largest jump, moving up 6 places to 20th.

PCS and Prospect both put in respectable improvements, jumping up 4 places to 12th and 19th respectively.

The RMT and the NUT section of the NEU move up 3 places. The NUT’s rise is especially surprising given the NEU merger last year.

Who’s down?

The biggest fall goes to the website of the The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, with a whopping fall of 22 places to 36. However this appears to be because of a technicality, having dropped the ‘www’ from their address. As long as the redirects have been set up properly, the site shouldn’t suffer a drop of traffic and the MozRank metric will soon catch up. Expect the site to bounce back next year.

A similar reason lies behind the drop to NARS, with a rebranded name leading to a new domain for the site. The NUM are going through a similar situation as well, having recently removed the ‘www’ from their domain. Again, these drops are likely to be temporary as the redirects take effect.

The AEP and NASUWT should be more worried though. They both drop 7 places without any technical reasons that I can spot.

Conclusion

There hasn’t been a large amount of movement on the top sites this year, with the CSP climbing back to the top. A couple of things to note:

There appears to be a trend to keep ‘section’ sites running longer following mergers, as illustrated by the former ATL, BECTU and NUT sites still going strong.

A couple of sites have dropped the ‘www’ before the domain name. This is also a trend in the wider industry. As long as the redirects are set-up correctly, this should cause any issues, but the metrics could take a while to catch up.